The Register

Newly minted software giant formally begins operations HPE says it has closed the $8.8bn deal to spin off much of its software business with Micro Focus.…

New products, cheaper kit and company tie-ins Every year for the past ten years has been the one when virtual reality will finally break out.…

First time boffins have detected water in the planetary system The Hubble Space Telescope has spotted possible signs of water on the outer planets of TRAPPIST-1, the system with the most exoplanets in a star’s habitable zone.…

Workers take automaker to labor relations board Electric carmaker Tesla has been hit with an official complaint from the US National Labor Relations Board following allegations from a number of employees that it was illegally blocking union activities.…

After Lenovo leaks the details Microsoft has used the IFA conference in Berlin to announce the next big update for Windows 10 users – the Fall Creators Update will be released on October 17.…

Una-peeling pulp-straining gizmo maker shuts down On Friday, embattled "smart" juicer startup Juicero shut down.…

California's Supreme Court rules authorities must justify denying data requests Police departments cannot categorically deny access to data collected through automated license plate readers, California's Supreme Court said on Thursday – a ruling that may help privacy advocates monitor government data practices.…

Oh, what can it mean to a Daydream believer ♪ More than 300 business leaders including the CEOs of Apple, Amazon, Facebook and Google have signed a letter slamming Donald Trump for his plan to remove legal protections from immigrant children born in the United States.…

Just don’t call us cloners IFA The mainstay of Microsoft's boutique Surface range faces tougher competition as rivals sharpen their act.…

Blame SatNad, not NYPD, for the mobile blues Comment Back in the day, the old IBM was famous for never breaking a promise to customers. For example, when IBM bought Lotus it was to honour a commitment to provide customers with office group productivity software that its own teams of programmers couldn't keep. IBM kept Token Ring and OS/2 customers happy long after the products were obsoleted.…

UK watchdog echoes Home Sec in anti-crypto comments The UK’s “independent reviewer of terrorism legislation” appears to have gone rogue, saying that encryption should be withheld from people who don’t verify their identities on social media.…

You understand it's not the final version? Hmm Hands On PC vendors are showing off Windows Mixed Reality headsets and controllers here at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, and this writer got to try new devices from Dell, Asus and Lenovo.…

Is Daddy going to live somewhere else? +Comment Western Digital boss Steve Milligan has apologised to Toshiba's CEO in an August 11 letter.…

Asks for 12 pence for 'unfair competition' One of the top third-party smartphone accessory manufacturers in China* is suing Apple for all of one Chinese yuan (about 12 pence; 15 US cents; 13 euro cents).…

Asks for 12 pence for 'unfair competition' One of the top third-party smartphone accessory manufacturers in China* is suing Apple for all of one Chinese yuan (about 12 pence; 15 US cents; 13 euro cents).…

Sees itself as VMware rival Nutanix closed its first year as a public company with a beat-and-raise quarter, firing on all fronts and heading confidently to a billion-dollar run rate next quarter.…

Broken the law while spying? Someone will write to you, later The latest agency that audits state spying in the UK, the Investigatory Powers Commission (IPCO), formally started operating today.…

Goldsmiths boffin wades into platform war stories at Reg lecture Reg Event Geeks have often enjoyed a fractious relationship with non-techies, but nowhere near as toxic as their relationships with other geeks who dare to have slightly different tech preferences.…

Relinquish your IP or lose one of the world's largest markets China's new cybersecurity law will enable its government to discover potential security vulnerabilities of any company doing business in the country, threat intelligence firm Recorded Future warns.…

What a beautiful mess It ain't over till the fat lady sings and Toshiba isn't singing yet, failing to meet its own August 31 deadline and resuming talks with Bain and Hon Hai bid groups alongside the WDC consortium.…

There's no security on holiday when you're a bellend Something for the Weekend, Sir? Stop the digital presses, hold the home page – I have breaking news for you! An organisation somewhere in the world has NOT been hacked into today!…

What if I told you it's possible to store both raw and summaries Working with data can be a pain in the butt. You do it because you need to, and because there's value in it – data-driven enterprises thrive on being able to eke as much concrete information as possible out of the stuff in order to maximise efficiency and attack the market share of the competition.…

Project tries to move on to lifecycle management rather than initial setup With the release of OpenStack Pike, the OpenStack Foundation has focussed on making the foundational software-defined networking environment look more digestible and better-suited to the world of microservices that's grown up around it.…

Head of IT then used happy user's praise to score a bigger budget On-Call Welcome again to On-Call, The Register's Friday frolic through readers' memories of jobs that turned into oddities.…

Shocking! Lab experiments prove promising, but predicting real destruction is a lot harder Earthquakes are, by their nature, unpredictable. Although geologists understand why and how the tremors occur, forecasting them more than a few minutes ahead is very difficult.…

IP telephony server discloses three vulns, one critical. You know what to do next Admins of the popular IP telephony application Asterisk have a lovely end to the week ahead of them - there's two moderate vulnerabilities, and one critical mess, that need patches.…

Just the usual procession of firmware vulnerabilities Infosec consulting firm Nomotion has reported vulnerabilities in Arris broadband modems and which it says are trivial to exploit, and could affect nearly 140,000 devices.…

Build will end in 2020, stay in the financial envelope.

我们将以4,000公里/小时的速度送货 Video Elon Musk might have popularized the idea of a Hyperloop transport system, but the Chinese have taken up the idea and plan to make it better – with 4,000km/h (2,485mi/h) bullet trains planned for the Middle Kingdom.…

Swarms of fire ants now just the second-nastiest thing floating around Houston With much of Houston, Texas, still under water from flooding caused by Hurricane Harvey, scammers are running robocall operations aimed at residents of the storm-ravaged area.…

Bitcoin isn't money, so money laundering laws shouldn't apply Spooked by prosecutions of Bitcoin sellers and pending money laundering rules, The Bitcoin Foundation on Tuesday said the cryptocurrency isn't really money and asked lawmakers to investigate the Department of Justice's pursuit of merchants selling it.…

Beware of geeks bearing Cobian RAT gifts Those looking on the dark web for malware capable of hijacking computers might have thought they were getting a bargain when a free trojan appeared on various online souks over the past few months.…

If you won't open up conversations, we'll make it a law, says Sessions' #2 The deputy US Attorney General said he wants legislators to force technology companies to decrypt people's private conversations.…

Everyone loves it! Everyone hates it! FCC will do whatever it wants anyway The latest comment period on the effort to kill off America's net neutrality rules has closed – and the circus has officially reopened for business.…

Oh look, the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board is being revived Uncle Sam's intelligence agencies have embarked on the next stage of their plan to retain spying powers over US citizens: getting Donald Trump onboard.…

And this is the agency that wants to regulate the internet A laughably insecure comment system has left US comms watchdog the FCC open to malware attack, and the agency doesn't seem to know what to do about it.…

Pink slips are en route, say staff Oracle is starting layoffs that will hit its hardware division, The Register has learned.…

Norbert Blum says his proposed solution doesn't work Computer science boffin Norbert Blum has acknowledged that his P≠NP proof is incorrect, as a number of experts anticipated.…

iPhone charging and backup base unit also on cards WDC has the highest-capacity microSDXC card at 400GB – pumping up mobile device storage space – and has launched a natty little iPhone charger that backs up the phone’s data.…

Compute-assisted DataStream Micro Arrays are no more Exclusive Compute-assisted storage array startup Coho Data has shut up shop.…

'Don't think of it as a watch' IFA Samsung has put its smartwatch on a diet in a bid to maintain dwindling market interest in the once-hot device category.…

Do we believe their PR or an anti-spytech activist? The Metropolitan Police has denied that use of its dubious facial recognition technology at the Notting Hill Carnival in London led to someone being wrongfully arrested.…

Not a universal home data store, but it's close +Comment WDC has released a home NAS that syncs with devices for storing, streaming and sharing wherever there's an internet connection.…

Two workshops added to MCubed agenda Events If you want to get deep and hands-on with machine learning, you'll be chuffed to know that we’ve added two more cracking workshops to our lineup at MCubed.…

Fed-up citizens join fictional opposition in their hundreds The former Soviet republic of Belarus has declared war on an imaginary country that exists within its own borders.…

Compact revived with flagship CPU IFA Sony has been saving its powder for the giant IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, where it's finally updated its phone range. Having used March's MWC event as more of a demo showcase, it's been a long wait for punters loyal to the Sony brand.…

Care requirements database held details of 3,000 service users on passwordless portal A UK council has been fined £70,000 for leaving vulnerable people's personal information exposed online for five years.…

'Key European markets'? C'mon, just tell us already LG today duly unveiled the strongest contender this year to swipe Samsung's Android crown – but still won't say if it's committed to releasing the phone in the UK.…

Building bad practices in ML can turn out awkward It is half a century since the days when London B&Bs would welcome guests with notices stating "No Irish, no blacks, no dogs." Twenty years since, as marketing manager for a major UK financial institution, I had to inform our underwriting department that adding "Does not apply to disabled persons" to an ad for motor insurance was no longer legal.…

Complaint states Bezos' empire did 'too little, too late' A couple has sued Amazon for allegedly selling them and others faulty solar eclipse glasses that damaged their eyesight.…